3031 Case Study

Grocery-cart wheels roll awry in 30318. Squeaking discordantly compared to the rest of Atlanta, this impoverished zip code conceals a dinnertime secret. Instead of vibrant broccoli displays with controlled rain showers, the area’s four grocery stores boast chartreuse candy wrappers and battered pork skins. Beneath hissing overhead lights, exhausted residents haul creaky carts between overstimulating aisles, their plump fingers precursors for later health problems like diabetes and heart disease.

Unlike the prognosis, the diagnosis for 30318 is simple: the zip code embodies a food desert. These ‘deserts' are even more complex than the unpronounceable chemicals like sodium stearoyl lactylate and azodicarbonamide on food labels. In a city where public transportation is limited to an anemic subway system, supermarkets -- and life expectancies -- remain just as unintegrated as car-constrained neighborhoods. On one side of town, famished families prioritize calories over nutrients. On another, blazer-clad businessmen, fatigued from rush-hour traffic, feel little connection to the underfunded groceries near their inner-city offices. Grocers shy away from 30318 investments, legislators debate retroactive healthcare policies, and identity-conscious kids, the targets of junk-food commercials,

I’d researched the Good Samaritan Health Center: the 30318 address, the volunteer physicians, the emphasis on healthcare as a human right. I’d imagined the shrieks of inoculated children, not the pastoral sight of farmland or the relaxing drip of low-glycemic honey. Like any grocer or legislator, I’d pictured health one dimensionally, devoid of urban gardens and food prescriptions. And while I did quantify volunteer hours for the audit, I was most affected by a conversation with a 30318 resident. One day, as I stood photographing an outdoor event for Good Sam’s PR campaign, I felt a tap on the